Way Of The Samurai

While Acquire's Way of the Samurai is perhaps not as good a game as Tenchu was, it is as good a ronin simulator as that was a ninja simulator. You can maybe chalk up some of its comparative shortcomings to the choice of subject matter, then -- wandering samurai are fun, but most would agree that ninja are much more so. Nevertheless, it's quite a good game in its own right, if you're willing to look past some faults in its graphics and camera control.

What Way of the Samurai does particularly well is presenting an open-ended world and storyline. The protagonist doesn't have any particular personality until you fill him with one, and there's no specific path to follow until you select it yourself. The game takes place in a relatively small world, a village and its surrounding environs near a mountain pass, but a small world can feel pretty large providing there are enough events packed into that space, and Way of the Samurai is certainly eventful enough. More important, those events have a variety of consequences depending on how they're approached -- by no means is it simply a matter of success or failure.

By no means is this going to be any kind of blockbuster, then, but it's a surprisingly well-made game for its unusually low profile. And it continues the Lightweight-led trend in samurai with afro haircuts, which is the sort of thing that can make a weak game good, and a good game great.

Gameplay At the heart of Way of the Samurai is a combat system that should be familiar to players of Bushido Blade. It's a little simpler than that, even in comparison to the stripped-down Bushido Blade 2, but the stance mechanics and how they affect attack combinations clearly echo that earlier samurai simulator. It may seem somewhat slow and clumsy to begin with, but in large part that's intentional -- the protagonist is meant to have a limited repertoire early on. This is an adventure game rather than a pure fighter, so character progression, learning new moves, as at least as important as the application of ones you already possess.

There's a nice succession of layers to the way in which attacks develop. Simply repeating the basic attacks available to start with will lead to the slow and gradual development of new techniques (executed by combinations of the face buttons), but there's a very low ceiling to the learning process if you aren't very creative about it. Learning a broader range of attacks at a greater rate requires a more creative style of combat -- fighting from several different positions and stances, and perfecting the timing-based evasion and parry abilities.

Collecting new weapons is the other key to exploring the corners of the combat system. There are axes, hammers, clubs, and other unusual destructive implements in addition to dozens of swords, all with different characteristics and repertoires of attacks with which they can be used. It's also possible to take weapons by the smithy and modify their capabilities further, providing you have the cash (or providing you'd like to pick a fight with the blacksmith, but that presents its own problems).

In combat, character facing is a bit of a problem early on until you get the hang of how to swap between large numbers of targets. As Kengo II promised to do when it was a known quantity, Way of the Samurai presents several enemies at a time in certain battles, sometimes as many as five or six. After a while, it gets easier to deal with large groups like that, although troubles with the camera never quite go away. The automatic camera direction is equipped to deal with environmental obstacles most of the time, but there are still situations where you can get stuck in a corner with objects in between the camera and the battles it's meant to be presenting. That's a small complaint, however, and after a while it's not so hard to avoid situations where the camera is likely to become a problem.

This is because you're likely to play through this game more than once, indeed much more if you find a fondness for the breadth of exploration options. Way of the Samurai is structured in very open-ended fashion, both in terms of its plot construction and its character development. Each adventure begins the same way -- an encounter on a bridge, where a group of thugs menace a young girl -- but beyond that point, there are any number of paths to follow.

Consider, for example, that first encounter. You can be a hero, whack the bad guys, save the girl, and accept her invitation to lunch. Variations to the above include killing their leader, letting him go, scaring the young lady off by forgetting to sheath your sword, or simply skipping out on lunch and heading off somewhere else. Alternatively, you can be a complete thug and help out in their kidnap attempt, with attendant variations on that theme as well, or just walk on by like nothing's wrong. All of the above lead to slightly different tweaks in the course of the three-day adventure, and while it's possible to miss out on most of the fun through apathy or mischance, it's also surprising how many actions have distinct consequences to the plot and the character rankings at the end of the game. Collecting all the various titles requires careful modulation of your actions throughout the story.

This is a fine piece of story structure, which is why it's unfortunate that the design work isn't matched by anything very compelling in the screenwriting department. The plot is based on Tinkertoy elements that should be old hat to anybody who's seen a couple of samurai movies or old westerns, and the characters are more amusing than genuinely engaging, with dialogue that doesn't usually rise above "workmanlike." You can only develop so much of an emotional investment in a samurai with an afro, no matter how funny the concept may be. Nevertheless, just exploring all the plot forks and strange corners of the game world is enough to occupy plenty of time.

Graphics The previously-employed adjective "workmanlike" also applies pretty accurately to Way of the Samurai's visual presentation. It's competently produced, and occasionally presents a nice view of the natural environs around Rokkotsu Pass, but in general the level of detail is low, in both models and textures. The lighting is very basic, except in a couple of spots where it's been specially tweaked to create a nice sunset or similar effect. There's also an awful lot of aliasing in the backgrounds, although it gets easier to deal with as the game goes on.

The character animation in combat is probably the visual highlight, what with so many different attacks and corresponding reaction animations. Our more vampiric fans should also get a kick out of the blood effects -- nothing Soldier of Fortune-caliber, but they do the job. If the in-game animations are effective, though, the cinematics are not. Instead, they're about as stiff as the dialogue, with physical acting that doesn't do much to help the balloon-encased text.

Sound Acquire's soundtracks for the Tenchu games are some of the best game music around, and Way of the Samurai has a little of the same character, although it's not as effective as its ancestors. It has that same odd blend of traditional Japanese sounds and more modern instruments -- a little hard to describe, but it's easy to understand once you hear a bit of it. Way of the Samurai relies more on ambient and natural sounds than music, though, what with all the long periods of empty space spent wandering about the area. It's fitting, but not what you'd call inspiring.

Battles are a little more fun in the audio department, since that's when the music kicks in and the characters actually deign to speak (if incoherently). There's no voice acting anywhere in Way of the Samurai, but the vengeful thugs, corrupt government officials, and other opponents scream in thoroughly satisfying fashion as you slice them up.

The Verdict

Some players may be turned off by the game's simple looks and occasionally cumbersome control, but sticking with Way of the Samurai reveals considerable depth. The area around Rokkotsu Pass has a great many events to get involved in, and the attention to action and consequence is surprising. For example, in some games, the blacksmith would simply refuse to perform a service you couldn't afford. Here, he does it, finds out you stiffed him, and then tries to kill you. You can fight back, of course, but knocking him off means no sword repairs for the rest of the game. Many other events are structured in a similar way -- it's that added layer of consequence that makes it worth playing so many times.

This isn't likely to rise above "cult hit" status, but it should develop a fairly impressive cult. Give it a look, particularly if you enjoyed Kengo or the Bushido Blade games. If nothing else, Afro Samurai has to be seen to be believed.